SEPTEMBER 



Wonderful is human speech, the work of gen- 

 erations upon generations, each striving to express 

 itself, its feelings, its thoughts, its needs, its suf- 

 ferings, its joys, its inexpressible desires. Won- 

 derful is human speech, for its complexity, its 

 delicacy, its power. But the pine-tree, under the 

 visitations of the heavenly influence, utters things 

 incommunicable; it whispers to us of things we 

 have never said and never can say, things that 

 lie deeper than words, deeper than thought. 

 Blessed are our ears if we hear, for the message is 

 not to be understood by every comer, nor indeed, 

 by any, except at happy moments. 



TORREY: The Foot-Path Way. 



4 



The water willow when it is of large size and 

 entire, is the most graceful and ethereal of our 

 trees. Its masses of light-green foliage, piled one 

 upon another to the height of twenty or thirty 

 feet, seemed to float on the surface of the water, 

 while the slight gray stems and the shore were 

 hardly visible between them. No tree is so wedded 

 to the water, and harmonizes so well with still 

 streams. It is even more graceful than the weep- 

 ing willow, or any pendulous trees which dip their 

 branches in the stream instead of being buoyed 

 up by it. 



THOREAU: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack 

 Rivers. 



